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Space Science

Russia Unveils Space Shuttle for Tourists 202

Posted by timothy from the goes-up-goes-down-da dept.
joestump98 writes: "Yahoo! News is running a story about those crazy, cash strapped, Russians building a space shuttle for tourists. For under $100,000 you can take a one-hour flight that includes a mere 3 minutes of weightlessness. Apparently the flights are to start around 2004/2005." 21mhz adds a link to this press release from Russia's Myasishchev Design Bureau, writing: "On close examination, it turns out to be a downscaled version of Buran."
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Russia Unveils Space Shuttle for Tourists More

Russia Unveils Space Shuttle for Tourists

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  • Weightlessness, meh. Thrust, oh yeah. (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I'm not sure what the design is the article refers too, but if it's a vertical takeoff shuttle, I think the experience of lift-off alone would justify the expense (if I had that kinda money). I mean, you can be weightless in a vomit comet for less (I think), but you sure can't blast straight up into heaven.

  • Slimfast diet plan (Score:3, Funny)

    by ZaneMcAuley ( 266747 ) on Friday March 15, 2002 @05:29AM (#3167232) Homepage Journal
    For under $100,000 you can take a one-hour flight that includes a mere 3 minutes of weightlessness.

    Order today :D

  • picture of the thing (Score:5, Informative)

    by LordSah ( 185088 ) on Friday March 15, 2002 @05:30AM (#3167233)
    If you'd like to see a picture [bbc.co.uk] of the craft, it's on the BBC [bbc.co.uk].
    • Damn it, I was hoping it'd look like the spaceship from Spaceballs that the hero and the wookie-wannabe (the thing played by John Candy) fly around in.
    • Contrast the BBC picture of the mockup with this line drawing from the Design bureau [spaceadventures.com]. Very different. Note particularly that the mockup has a smaller nose, and the two passenger windows are below the cockpit, like the Burans and the American shuttles. Note that the line drawing seems to have a cargo pod, or fuel tank, which is abandoned.

      From my reading it sounds like the capsule only does a single burn. It doesn't have to do a burn to return from orbit into the Earth's atmosphere as it never acheives orbital velocity. Its trajectory would resemble that of a ballistic missile, like a SCUD, or a V2.

    • The aircraft behind is the thing's launch carrier, M-55X. Will Cosmopolis be the first successful airborne-launch space project?
    • The interesting bit is that it does not inherit from Buran. Buran was more shuttle like. This looks like one of the earlier prototypes that landed on water not on airfield. There used to be some pictures taken from a New Zeland navy fregate in the South Pacific of one of these craft taken after it did a full automated test flight. This was at least several years before the Buran test flight.
      Also, an interesting detail of the design of the Buran and the prototyopes is a F111/SU35 style full cabin eject.
      And one wrong detail in the article. Buran flew with a crew, but the flight was aborted and the crew ejected successfully. Which many of the earlier test pilots could not (and anyone on the shuttle cannot as we probably all know). There was a reasonably good movie by one of the russian TV stations about Buran. And a very scary gallery of portraits of test pilots who were not so lucky.

  • Expansive for what you get (Score:4, Interesting)

    by SomethingOrOther ( 521702 ) on Friday March 15, 2002 @05:32AM (#3167238) Homepage

    For under $100,000 you can take a one-hour flight that includes a mere 3 minutes of weightlessness

    If its weightlessnes you are after, wouldn't it be a damn sight cheeper just to put a plane into a dive and float arround for a bit..... as in an astronoughts training.
    (The plane is in free-fall.... Exacly the same effect as being in orbit)

    What do you get for your monney other than going on a plane that goes very high (tm) ?

    • If its weightlessnes you are after, wouldn't it be a damn sight cheeper just to put a plane into a dive and float arround for a bit..... as in an astronoughts training.

      Hmm, yeah, maybe except using that method, you only get 10 seconds at a time of weightlessness, which, even if you've just met the girl, is not enough time to reach the 'mile high, and floating in mid-air club'. Any guy knows that 3 minutes is plenty of time to do that and try weightless cigarette smoking...
      • bet it would be no smoking anyway. and you would have to keep yr seat belt on at all times, which would kinda kill the fun of weightlessness.

      • ... wouldn't it be a damn sight cheeper just to put a plane into a dive and float arround for a bit ...

        Hmm, yeah, maybe except using that method, you only get 10 seconds at a time of weightlessness ...

        The plane they use in astronaut training (the "vomit comet") [avweb.com]give you more than ten seconds of weightlessness. Here is another first person account [artbell.com], this time from a guy who rode one intended for the public.

        It is my understanding that the passengers experience "weightlessness" on the up portion of their trip, as well as the down portion. I believe the pilots train in how to gun the engines, point the nose up, then cut them, and fly the plane on a parabola that keeps the occupants weightless for the longest period of time consistent with not crashing at the end.

    • how about a view out of the window ? it would sure impress me a lot to see the earth from that height ...
    • No thats not weightlessness

      Hows that any diffrent than being on a rollercoaster?
    • If its weightlessnes you are after, wouldn't it be a damn sight cheeper just to put a plane into a dive and float arround for a bit.....

      As a matter of fact, it is a lot cheaper. The same company offers Zero Gravity [spaceadventures.com] trips for $5400.

    • What you get (Score:3, Informative)

      by maddogsparky ( 202296 )
      What do you get for your monney other than going on a plane that goes very high (tm) ?

      Astronaut wings.

      The only way to get them is by going to a high enough altitude; 100 km is high enough. Incidently, it will also get the X-prize for the company if it is the first to pull this off (think of the monetary incentives for early aviation; the X-prize is the equivalent for putting regular people in space).

  • Crisscross? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by red5 ( 51324 ) <(moc.liamg) (ta) (5derig)> on Friday March 15, 2002 @05:36AM (#3167242) Homepage Journal
    To this now the russians are the crazy capitalists and it's us with the draconian anti-freedom laws (DMCA).

    • Re:Crisscross? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by ryanwright ( 450832 )
      To this now the russians are the crazy capitalists and it's us with the draconian anti-freedom laws (DMCA).

      I was thinking the exact same thing. The Russians get it. Why the hell don't our leaders run with this? It's a huge idea and will make millions, not to mention the awesome benefits to technology. We piss and moan about people like Tito coming to the ISS while the Russians are making money. The next guy they're taking up has gone through a year of training and is paying millions to be an active crew member. He's going to perform experiments and act as a functional member of the crew.

      There are more than enough people willing and able to pay for things like this. What the hell is wrong with the people running my beloved USA?

  • Normal people? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Judg3 ( 88435 ) <jeremy&pavleck,com> on Friday March 15, 2002 @05:36AM (#3167244) Homepage Journal
    The makers of this new spaceship believe there is a huge untapped market of would-be space tourists - ordinary people willing to pay for the holiday of a lifetime.

    I don't know about you, but I sure as hell don't consider anyone able to pay $100,000 for 3 minutes of weightlessness normal.

    But I must admit, it's a cool idea and brings us 1 step closer to a trip to the moon costing as much as a flight from New York to London. But hell, even the cost of that flight is out of my price range.
  • OR however many miles high they will take us... but thats the important part!!

    1 pilot.. and room for 2!!!

    3 minute quickie in space for 100 grand.. 200 if yer payin for your partner... now that will be the new IN thing... hehe...

    • "I think he's attempting reentry!"

      10 points to whoever replies with the movie that's from...

    • According to the article, the tourist-shuttle will take 3 crew (1 pilot, 2 passengers) and suspend them for 3 minutes. If you added a pair of boosters, stripped out the crew compartment and associated life-support, would it be possible to boost light cargo into orbit? I mean, hell, at $100k, even LEO would be good.

      That brings up the other question, why the hell doesn't NASA fund the Buran program instead of the shuttle program? No crew compartment = more cargo capacity, less cost/turnaround time (since we don't have to certify the craft for human occupants.) Not to mention Russian scientists/technicians are cheap these days.

  • For $150,000... (Score:3, Funny)

    by tom_newton ( 179430 ) on Friday March 15, 2002 @05:42AM (#3167263) Homepage
    You get to ride on the inside :)
  • ..stepping in their plane if the quality of this project can be measured by means of their website [cosmopolis21.ru]: offline.
  • Knowing the way some Russians do business, they will probably stop the ship once they're out there and ask for another $100,000 to get you back in one piece.

  • you can get that cheaper (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    A jump from the Golden Gate Bridge gives you a few seconds of weightlessness for free and may be no less safe than the Russian space shuttle.
  • If they run their shuttle the way they run their airline then I think I'll stick to earth bound holidays...

    Also do you really want to pay enough money to go a world cruise that actually lasts a while?

    OR for the same money how far could you go in learning to fly yourself and get a plane - okay you're limited to the sky ;> but the freedom of flying yourself is definetly worth it.

  • $100K / 180 sec = $555.55 per second (Score:3, Funny)

    by Bowie J. Poag ( 16898 ) on Friday March 15, 2002 @06:05AM (#3167302) Homepage


    3 minutes, at nearly $600 per second. About half of that time will be spent vomiting, so now you're looking at more than $1000 per second.

    Not since "Glitter" hit the theaters has so much money been made by causing people to barf.

    Cheers,

  • More than just one flight - read the article (Score:5, Informative)

    by Ice Tiger ( 10883 ) on Friday March 15, 2002 @06:13AM (#3167312)
    People,

    If you READ the article then you can see that you actually get more than just a one hour flight, from the press release :-

    "At the peak of its parabolic trajectory, passengers will experience several minutes of weightlessness and see the Earth from space. Four days of space flight orientation including centrifuge, zero-gravity and high-altitude jet flight training, as well as safety and onboard system lessons are expected to be required."

    Not so sure about the complexity of the craft with ejection of the motor at burnout and deployable aerodynamic control surfaces with a 'chute for final landing, for a contrast in design for the same problem take a look at http://www.bristolspaceplanes.com/projects/ascende r.shtml

    • Indeed, they should give you some training on free-fall, or emergency egress, etc. Does anybody remember what a dismal failure the Russian Space Shuttle (Buran) program was?

      They eventually just gave up... and that was during the Cold War. I don't know that having one of the Buran designers on the team is that big of a plus for me.
      • Repeat after me: "Economics killed the Soviet space shuttle".

        Buran had 1 successful flight that was unmanned. Manned flights were planned but canceled because the Soviet economy fell apart.

        Those Russian engineers have a lot more experience in manned space flight than the US. They hold ALL the records for duration, ALL records related to space stations and have flown many more cosmonauts than the US has flown astronauts.

        Sputnik was put up by the Soviets. Yuri Gagarin was put up by the Soviets. The first space station was launched by the Soviets. They run far more supply missions to the ISS than the Americans.

        And no, I am not a Russian; I am a fifth generation American who is deeply frustrated by the US space program.

        • Those Russian engineers have a lot more experience in manned space flight than the US. They hold ALL the records for duration, ALL records related to space stations and have flown many more cosmonauts than the US has flown astronauts.

          Damn right. While these safety jokes may be funny, they don't hold an ounce of truth. The Russians have been doing this much longer than we have and have an excellent safety record. I'd hop on a Russian rocket without even thinking about it.

          And no, I am not a Russian; I am a fifth generation American who is deeply frustrated by the US space program.

          As am I. As is most of America. Look at the cover of Popular Science this month... Nerds aren't the only ones upset over what has become of NASA.
  • heh, just thought somebody should say something...

  • Not a mini-me Buran, more a carbon-copy X-20 (Score:3, Interesting)

    by henley ( 29988 ) on Friday March 15, 2002 @06:19AM (#3167328) Homepage
    21mhz adds a link to this press release from Russia's Myasishchev Design Bureau, writing: "On close examination, it turns out to be a downscaled version of Buran."

    Hmmm. Not so much Buran (AKA Shuttleski; the two vehicles look remarkably similar), but it is the spitting image of the X-20 Dynasoar (designed and almost-built in the '60s by the USAF). Pretty Pictures Here [deepcold.com].

    There's no reason to suppose copying. Both vehicles are built for approximately the same mission, so it's more concurrent evolution.

    • It is not a copy of X-20. The Soviets already designed AND flew a small space plane called the BOR-4 as a test vehicle for the Buran project. It made sub-orbital flights in 1982 and 1984. It seems that the new Russian "space plane" is based on the BOR-4, or at least the experience gained in the BOR-4 project.

      Photoshere [euroavia.org]
    • Here [buran.org] is the comparison photo I keep on my web site. Buran looks like the US shuttle because it was based on the US shuttle in order to avoid having to carry out all-new research; the Shuttle was already tested and known to work well by that point.

      Also: Photos [buran.org] from Sydney of the aerodynamic Buran 002 test article.
    • And the Dynasoar was the spitting image of a Nazi sub-orbital design that never got built.
    • Hmmm. Not so much Buran (AKA Shuttleski; the two vehicles look remarkably similar), but it is the spitting image of the X-20 Dynasoar

      The X-20 is *not* a dinosaur! It can't be that old, I haven't even seen any SPECIAL OFFERS for it yet! And why would you need an X-20, when the X-10 has the all *NEW* Pan & Tilt feature? For crying out loud, didn't you see the girl in the bikini on the popunder window? If I understand correctly, she comes with it!
  • Okay, it's very expensive, and most ppl will just not be interested to do this.
    But there are quite a number of people that dream to go to space, but for one or another reason, could never get there. After all, not all ppl have the inclination to join the military for X year in order to get a very small chance at chance to the training...
    Let's not even talk about nationalities and politics...
    At least those people now have a chance at making their dream come true and it's only a feather on the Russians cap that they are the ones implementing it first.
    With the US, Russia, EU, India and Japan already out there (I must be forgetting some), others are bound to join too.
    This can only be a good idea to make space interesting again (and let's hope they'll stop bombing each other to hell while humanity has a new challenge).:wq

  • More info... (Score:3, Informative)

    by zardor ( 452852 ) on Friday March 15, 2002 @06:21AM (#3167332)
    Seems that the C-21 is the Russian Entry [xprize.org] to the X-Prize [xprize.org].
    Also, they have built two of the M-55 carrier craft. They are a updated 'research' version of the M-17, which was the Russian version of America's U2 spy plane.
    This page on HTOL TSTO [geocities.com] (Horizontal take off & landing, two stage to orbit) has a few pictures of various launch systems. There is a nice picture of the M-17 in flight at the end of that page. (The M-55 in this picutre [bbc.co.uk] seems to have additional wing mounted engines.
    According to the cutaway model [spaceandtech.com], the cabin is relativly roomy, but there dosn't seem much room for fuel. Most of the equipment at the rear of the craft seems to be life support and other equipment, not presurised fuel tanks. Perhaps they are using solid rocket motors (aka Big Firework), but russians tend to prefer, and endeed excell, at liquid fueled rockets. Besides, this schematic [space.com] seems to show a rather different type of spacecraft. (note the wings, and overall length) Therefore, I suspect that this is a plywood mockup, for the benifit of potential investors, in the tradition of most space enterprises over the past 5 years.

  • American Express (Score:3, Funny)

    by Xamdam_us ( 524194 ) on Friday March 15, 2002 @06:28AM (#3167339) Homepage
    Bottle of Vodka -- $26

    Flight into Space -- $100,000

    Not burning up on re-entry -- Priceless

    • Mastercard (Score:2, Funny)

      by yatest5 ( 455123 )
      Making a cheap-ass joke: $0

      Posting it on /.: -1 Karma

      Getting it fundamentally wrong: Priceless

      ;-) - sorry man.

    • I'm feeling as boring as cold toast so I just have to point out that in Russia a big bottle of Vodka costs more like $2. Also there will be no re-entry because you will never leave.

      And to totally scare you off I will also dare to compare this to the trip that Tito took. Tito payed ALOT more than $100,000 (ok he got alot more).
      http://www.space.com/dennistito/
      http://w ww.space.com/businesstechnology/technology /tito_next_step_010501-1.html
    • Good joke, but it was Mastercard (who sued Ralf Nader for using their ad format during the last prez election), check the attrition.org Mastercard spoof gallery [attrition.org] for more.

  • Shocked?!? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Tranvisor ( 250175 )
    So am I the only one whos shocked at the fact that the Russians (the former USSR!) are going to be the first ones to approach a capitalist space program?! Come on, get your act together USA! Our entire country is based on the ideal that if you come up with something cool to do/sell you should do it and get rich, and the Russians are beating us to the punch? Please NASA, do something similar so you can fund a fucking Mars mission when the gov cuts your funding! Just think, we have the shuttles, its the only way we are going to go to mars any time soon and not have johnny taxpayer pay about a zillion dollars for it.
    • Just think, we have the shuttles, its the only way we are going to go to mars any time soon and not have johnny taxpayer pay about a zillion dollars for it.

      Actually, the shuttle is a collossal waste of money - it costs an unearthly sum for every launch. The Shuttle lifts about 100 tons, which is impressive, until you recall that 80 of those tons are Orbiter that glide back down. So you get 20 tons of payload. For $600M.

      Yuck.

      A better way to design a reusable spacecraft is to make the BOTTOM stages recyclable. This way you waste less of your energy lifted stuff that doesn't need to stay up.

      See Robert Zubrin's book "Entering Space" if you want solid details from someone who really knows what he's talking about.

      As for Mars, the Shuttle hardly has the thrust capacity to get into a lunar transfer orbit, let alone one to Mars. Johnny Taxpayer shelling out is the best solution. New technologies need to be developed for interplanetary flight. Plain and simple. Now, the total cost of doing this, in dollars per taxpayer per year, is very affordable.

      So I agree that the US needs to get its act together. By spending more on space.

      As far as commercialisation goes, kudos to the Russians. That's cool.
      • Actually, the shuttle is a collossal waste of money - it costs an unearthly sum for every launch. The Shuttle lifts about 100 tons, which is impressive, until you recall that 80 of those tons are Orbiter that glide back down.

        Exactly why is the orbiter so heavy, is it simply because it has to carry engines capable of lifting it through the most dense part of the atmosphere? IIRC there was a Japanese design which included carrying around a jet engine, only any use once below 40 odd thousand feet, but would make landings easier and mean that the thing would not need a towtruck when it lands.A better way to design a reusable spacecraft is to make the BOTTOM stages recyclable. This way you waste less of your energy lifted stuff that doesn't need to stay up.

        The original shuttle design used a manned carrier vehicle arrangement similar to the Russian design

        As for Mars, the Shuttle hardly has the thrust capacity to get into a lunar transfer orbit, let alone one to Mars.

        Not sure there would be much point in getting the shuttle into such an orbit anyway. It can't carry a decent lunar lander and still needs to get back.
    • I wouldn't be surprised if lawsuits make commercial space outfits economically non-viable in the US. The same thinng has all but killed the private plane manufacturing business, and you can't even buy cool gadgets like hover mowers here for the same reason.
    • You've kind of answered your own question.

      The reason why the Russians are able to run rings around us is that their efforts are bweing run by private companies, while NASA is a huge stupid and typically inefficient beaurocracy.

      NASA spent 2 billion dollars on their next shuttle vehicle, X33, and got nowhere. By the time the money ran out, they were basically back at square one, because their design was based on like eight different new and unproven technologies.

      The Russian company is spending a total of 60 million to develop this.

      It'll be beautiful if it works.

      Jon Acheson

  • Looks aerodynamicaly unstable to me (Score:3, Informative)

    by NewtonsLaw ( 409638 ) on Friday March 15, 2002 @06:49AM (#3167370)
    Having designed, built and flown a lot of conventional and unorthodox model aircraft (including flying wings, flying disks, canards, lifting-body craft, a flying lawnmower and a flying dog-house) in my time, I have to say that the craft looks decidedly unstable to me.

    All that vertical surface at the wing-tips will produce a very significant dutch-rolling tendency.

    While I'm sure that such instability could be compensated for using a fly-by-wire computer system, I can't see any aerodynamic benefit to having such a large amount of tip-fin area.

    Tip-fins are usually used to reduce the size of vorticies produced when the high pressure air below the wing meets the low pressure air above it.

    At high angles of attack, these vorticies create huge amounts of drag and reduce the wing's efficiency quite substantially.

    You'll notice that some modern passenger jets use tip-fins as a method of reducing tip vorticies and they show quite significant improvements in fuel-efficiency as a result -- however, I believe that the 747 required extra vertical stabilizer area to compensate for the destabilizing effect of the tip-fins when they were added.

    However, the fins on the Russian craft are much larger than would be necessary to obtain the required vortex-reducing effect and smack of being the work of a cartoonist rather than an aerodynamic engineer.

    This mock-up looks more like just a marketing tool than a genuine attempt to produce an accurate facsimile of a workable design.

    It makes sense really -- don't waste any money on design or testing until you've built a shuttle-like plywood mock-up to gauge the level of interest and maybe even collect a few booking deposits from wannabe travellers.

  • Buran in Gorky Park (Score:2, Interesting)

    by orin ( 113079 )
    For those that visit Moscow, in Gorky Park, by the river is the shell of a Buran Shuttle. Entry is only a few US dollars - and it includes a rather dodgy multimedia presentation on space flight. The intersting thing for me when visiting was that, even when you get to Gorky Park, the thing isn't really advertised. I ended up taking the ferris wheel so I could look over the park layout to find this shuttle that I'd read about in my Lonely Planet guide. Russia apparently built 5 Burans, only one of which did an unmanned orbital flight. I'm not sure if the one in Gorky Park is that one. Makes you wonder where the others are and if anything will be done with them besides stripping them down and turning them into a rotting tourist attraction in Moscow.

    Here is a picture I found on the web:

    http://aeroweb.lucia.it/~agretch/Buran/gpk94ag_bur an2.jpg [lucia.it]

    It will be interesting to see where this Space Tourist venture goes. If it can pay for itself (and one would assume it could as it is hard to believe that anybody could afford to run it at a loss) it might turn out that the Russian space industry will get a good head start in the space tourism industry.
    • Makes you wonder where the others are and if anything will be done with them besides stripping them down and turning them into a rotting tourist attraction in Moscow.

      Slashdot previously covered this [slashdot.org], and this [slashdot.org].

  • Considering how much that rich US guy paid to go up to the Space station, $100,000 is a snap!

    However you may moan and groan, they probably have a reasonable market for this kind of thing. I remember my ex boss, for example, who said things like $1,000,000 for a house, cheap don't you think? When of course my house was costing me the earth (for me) at a mere $100,000....
    • "However you may moan and groan, they probably have a reasonable market for this kind of thing."

      Something tells me a lot of the potential market involves plenty of moaning and groaning ^^;

      I wonder which'll be the first pr0n magazine / site offering space-based images...

      Maran
    • > Considering how much that rich US guy paid to go up to the Space station, $100,000 is a snap!

      I don't think so. How much did Tito pay? I think it was $20M, And how long was he in orbit? 6 days or so. (Which roughly makes ~$2.3k/minute of weightlessness)

      Compare that an suborbital flight for $100k with just 3 minutes weightlesness (~$33k/minute).
  • I think this is probably the best news for manned spaceflight since the construction of ISS began. Why? Simple: It brings manned spaceflight to the market. There's a huge demand for space tourism, and that should bring down prices quickly.

    The better our launch capabilities become, the sooner we will become a truely space faring civilization.

    And that is something I want to see in my life time.
  • $100,000 for yourself
    $50 for a hooker
    $100,000 for her ticket
    3 minute sex in space with a hooker? Priceless.

    Somethings money can't buy.

  • It's time for commercialization (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 15, 2002 @08:30AM (#3167565)
    If five millionaires can fund the entire Russian space program and turn it into a going commercial concern, then more power to them. NASA has done a good job of spending billions of dollars of taxpayer's money and to what avail? Pure research is in my opinion very justifiable and definitely in the realm of government funding.

    But in their zeal to "own" space - a typical beaurocratic tendency - NASA has attempted to control what really is now applied engineering; the shuttle program is now NOT research, it's the things they do with it that are. Building a Space Station is NOT research, it's the experiments that are.

    Therefore, the Russians have done a marvellous job of opening the awareness of the entire world to a tectonic shift in thinking; that the flights should now be commercial.

    Government can still do research aboard specially constructed craft and by contracting for fares aboard commercial ships.

    It's now time to stop the whining by the people on this board who believe the crap they are being fed by NASA about "safety" and other garbage. If ageing John Glenn can fly as a publicity stunt, so can a fit engineer as a tourist who is funding a significant part of an entire country's space effort and good on him.

    Safety is relative. You can white-water raft down the Colorado river and die pretty easily, there are risks in many sports. There's risk in flying spaceships too, but that will not deter someone who really wants to go. If the tourist endangers the mission, then either the mission or the ship were badly designed.

    All the negative posts are clearly, in the eyes of onlookers, just sour grapes and ignorance.

    And congratulations to the Russians who deserve tremendous credit for taking this bold step - just like they did as first to put up a satellite, a man in space, and a woman in space.
  • Am I the only person that sees a striking resemblance to this thing and John Crichton's ship on Farscape?
  • I think it is extremely rude and impolite to call an entire nation "crazy", especially on the front page of one's web site. An apology from the news maker would be appropriate.
  • Step 1: Offer orbital flights for $100,000
    Step 2: ???
    Step 3: Profit

    How can they lose?
    • The reason Russia was able to make money off Tito (and will from Mark Shuttleworth), is because their costs are MASSIVELY (about 10 x) less than NASA's. I think that's why NASA put up such a stink about it - because it was embarrassing to have the numbers come to light.
  • On close examination, it turns out to be a downscaled version of Buran.
    No it doesn't. There are plenty of good pictures of the Buran Orbiter, as well as the experimental and prototype vehicles that preceeded it, at the NPO Molniya [buran.ru] web page.

    They have a nice set of web pages there, BTW. Some are in English, but most are in Cyrillic. I particularly like the Buran/Shuttle comparison [buran.ru] and the clicking diagram of the full Buran/Energia stack [buran.ru].

    Growing up in the 70s, I had a poster almost exactly like this on my bedroom wall, 'cept it was of the Shuttle, but Buran [buran.ru].
  • Having travelled in the eastern block I can tell you honestly that there is a different sense of public safety there. People really don't get sued for negligence, and caveat emptor means so much more than be careful or your new jeans might rip-It means buyer beware for your life!
    People drive drunk on mountain roads with their headlights off in the middle of the night.
    We could never get a passenger flight off, the liability insurance would be way to huge.
  • We "won" the space race, the arms race and the cold war... We're the richest country in the world, and the most successful space program... Now Russia's doing commercial space tourism, and the best we can do is keep sending probes, cutting NASA's budget and reducing manned spaceflights. It's just sad...
  • [sigh]* 2002-03-14 23:15:39 Russian tourist mini-shuttle (articles,space) (rejected)[/sigh]

    Well, anyway. What I mentioned in my story submission, and what's most fascinating to me about this, is what it might mean for the future. This is the way the Shuttle was originally supposed to be built, remember: a fully reusable booster stage, basically a really big plane, that would carry the orbiter up ~50 miles, at which point the orbiter's engines would kick in and take it the rest of the way, with the booster flying back to Earth and loaded up for the next launch. It was classic penny-wise, pound-foolish budget cuts that saddled us with the current hybrid mess.

    So this could act as proof-of-concept for such a thing -- if they can build it cheaply enough for the tourist trade, they can build a bigger, orbital model to do the sorts of things the Shuttle does now at a much lower cost. Also, a bigger version of the current sub-orbital craft, if turned out assembly-line style, might achieve the economies of scale necessary for commercial travel. London to Tokyo in a couple of hours ...
  • From the pics at the BBC, this is a slightly different design than Buran - note the vertical control surfaces are on the wingtips instead of a single tailfin. Interestingly, this looks a lot like some of the early Shuttle designs - the current Shuttle, which was designed to service a space station, was redesigned to replace a station, and now services a station.

    I wonder if this might be used as an alternative to the Soyuz capsules the Russians currently use for unmanned resupply of the ISS - it could conceivably be flown entirely from the ground, a capability demonstrated by Buran (a capability the Shuttle doesn't have).
  • The problems with getting to orbit for tourists are almost completely financial- basically, the people with enough money to fund this, don't have the guts/knowledge to actually pay for the guys with the know-how to go through with it.

    Reasonable estimates for costs of going to orbit with some designs are below $500/kg. A person weighs maybe 60-80 kgs on average, therefore the cost should be about $30,000-$50,000 including luggate; adding on 100% markup for profit and you're on orbit for $100,000.

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